


Charlie's girlfriend

by TheSingerThatYouWanted (orphan_account)



Series: The Mighty Boosh Christmas Countdown Thing [8]
Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Fluff, I'll be honest I'm not entirely sure what that tag means, M/M, Pre-Slash, i think, zooniverse days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:19:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2755910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TheSingerThatYouWanted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vince attempts to write the next installment in the Charlie series. Howard has had a very bad day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charlie's girlfriend

**Author's Note:**

> So I've successfully kept this up for a full week! That's longer than I stick with most projects. I'm just having so much fun with these.

Vince sat cross-legged on the floor of the tiny keepers’ hut, resting his back against the battered sofa. In his hands several scraps of paper were slowly becoming the next Charlie book. Surrounding him, covering the floor, were handfuls of crayons in every colour imaginable, some broken or blunted from years of use. Vince made a mental note to ask Howard to get him some more for his birthday. He was concentrating hard, the tip of his tongue poking out between his lips. The crayon in his hand- bright purple, his favourite colour- moved slowly across the page in careful, rounded letters. He mouthed the words as he wrote.  
 _“The pink bubblegum monster had regained his usual shape and was making his way home when he met a beautiful green apple-y beauty. She came from years of gum left by school pupils trying to be the coolest at break by blowing the biggest bubbles, even though everyone knows that to be the coolest you have to have the fastest shoes. She opened her gloopy green eyes and looked at Charlie-” ___  
His concentration was broken when the door swung open. The sudden draught sent the loose pages flying around the room, scattering them completely out of order. Vince could practically feel his good mood shatter.  
“Hey, be careful, will you? This’ll take me ages to sort out!” he said, but his anger died immediately when he saw Howard. The other keeper looked like an extra in a zombie movie, with terrible bags under his eyes and hair even more all over the place than usual. Vince actually flinched looking at him.  
“Mate, you look terrible,” he said. He’d been trying to come off as sympathetic but judging by the look on his friend’s face he could tell he’d missed by a mile. Howard stepped over him, aiming to sit down, but his foot skidded on one of Vince’s crayons and he ended up hitting the sofa in a sort of undignified sprawl. Vince bit back a noise of protest when he saw it was his best purple that had been squashed, letting Howard lie down and tentatively offering him a cushion. He’d learned from experience that there were some times when it was best to tread very carefully around his big Northern friend, and this looked like one of those times. Howard accepted the pillow with a reluctant half-smile and lay down on his front, propped up on his elbows.  
“What’s wrong?” asked Vince, turning to face him and sitting up on his heels. “Was it Fossil again?”  
Bob Fossil had been nagging Howard lately about building new enclosures for the animals. No matter how hard the zookeeper tried to design fun new homes for the zoo’s occupants to live in, they never seemed to live up to Fossil’s expectations. Howard sighed and nodded, rubbing his eyes as though that would help him shake off a little of his exhaustion.  
“Yeah. It’s not fair, Vince. I mean, I’ve been up all night working on those snake tanks, and do you know what he said? ‘I wanted cages.’ _Cages ___, for Christ’s sake. I keep telling him, you can’t put snakes in cages, but it’d take a sledgehammer to get through that thick skull of his.”  
Vince frowned sympathetically, standing up.  
“Do you want a cup of tea or something?”  
“No, thanks. I just needed a break.”  
Slowly Vince sat back down, not entirely convinced.  
“You sure? You look tense. If I-” He reached out and gripped Howard’s shoulders, massaging a little of the tension away. Howard stiffened, craning his neck to look back over his shoulder.  
“What are you doing?”  
“Just a massage. Lie down, it doesn’t work if you’re sitting like that.”  
“Why are you giving me a massage?”  
Vince rolled his eyes in exasperation.  
“Because if I don’t then you might explode. Look at yourself, Howard, you’re like an over-wound clock. Any minute now something’s gonna go twang and then there’ll be springs everywhere and I won’t have a clue what to do with my day. Lie down, already.”  
Awkwardly, and with no small amount of reluctance, Howard did as he was told. Vince smiled as he began to massage out the tension from his friend’s shoulders. At first he could feel Howard resisting, but then his thumb found a particularly troublesome muscle and as he pressed the tension from it he felt Howard melt beneath his hands. Grinning now, Vince’s hands travelled down across Howard’s back until he was finished, loose-limbed and more relaxed than Vince could remember seeing him.  
“Better?” he asked.  
“Mmmm,” mumbled the taller man vaguely by way of response. “Much better. Thank you.”  
“No problem.”  
Vince sat down again, carefully selecting an orange crayon to replace the purple one Howard had accidentally murdered and continuing with his writing.  
 _“Charlie fell in love, but the green bubblegum monster- her name was Julie- didn’t love him back. She didn’t like being a bubblegum monster and always tried so hard to be other things, even though Charlie did his best to explain to her that being a bubblegum monster was a good thing.” ___  
“What are you writing?” asked Howard. Vince looked up, startled.  
“It’s about Charlie. In this one he meets a girl and they fall in love.”  
“Good for him,” mumbled Howard. Vince could practically hear the internal monologue- ‘great, even a creature made of old gum has a better love life than me’. He didn’t comment on it, just smiled and shook his head.  
“Nah, not really. She’s always wanting to be other things, like a movie star or an astronaut. She doesn’t want to be a bubblegum monster. And Charlie keeps telling her that he loves her as a bubblegum monster but she won’t listen to him.”  
There was a pause. Howard rolled over to face Vince, looking a little sad.  
“So what happens?”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Does Charlie convince her that she’s good enough? Or does she leave to be an astronaut? You can’t just end it there.”  
Vince shrugged and looked down at the paper in his hands.  
“But I don’t know the answer.”  
Howard stared at him for a minute in trademark Howard-y disbelief, then flopped back down onto the cushion.  
“That’s not very fair.”  
Vince laughed, leaning right back against the sofa and craning his neck over backwards until he was looking at Howard with an upside-down grin.  
“He’s in love, Howard. It’s never gonna be fair.”  
Howard huffed out a vague sort of sigh and closed his eyes. Vince reached up and brushed some of Howard’s hair back from his forehead almost absent-mindedly.  
“You need to sort your hair,” he said. Howard twitched a condescending eyebrow at him.  
“This hair takes perfectly good care of itself, little man.”  
“Course it does.”  
Vince could tell that his friend was starting to drop off, and he was so used to Howard’s way of thinking that he managed to interrupt before the taller man had even started speaking.  
“Just get some sleep, mate. I’ll distract Fossil if he comes looking for you.”  
“You know what? ‘m not even gonna ask how you knew that,” said Howard sleepily. “Thanks, little man.”  
“No problem,” said Vince. After a few seconds the hut was filled with the sound of Howard’s snoring. Satisfied that his friend was getting some rest he settled back down to write. A minute or so later Howard’s arm slipped down and hung across Vince’s chest, holding him gently but firmly where he was. A small smile crept across Vince’s face and he cuddled in against the arm. The material of Howard’s jacket was weirdly comfortable, and he felt drowsiness start to build behind his own eyes as his nose filled with the familiar scent of his best friend. Vince smiled.  
“G’night, Howard,” he whispered.  
Howard was in too deep a sleep to respond.

**Author's Note:**

> Nope, once again, I can't even hope to own them.


End file.
